Ovid

Love on this side, Hatred on that, are struggling, and are dragging my tender heart in opposite directions; but Love, I think, still gets the better. I will hate, 646 if I can; if not, reluctantly will I love; the bull loves not his yoke; still, that which he hates he bears.
I fly from treachery; your beauty, as I fly, brings me back; I abhor the failings of your morals; your person I love. Thus, I can neither live without you, nor yet with you; and I appear to be unacquainted with my own wishes. I wish that either you were less handsome, or less unprincipled. So beauteous a form does not suit morals so bad. Your actions excite hatred; your beauty demands love. Ah wretched me! she is more potent than her frailties.
O pardon me, by the common rites of our bed, by all the Gods who so often allow themselves to be deceived by you, and by your beauty, equal to a great Divinity with me, and by your eyes, which have captivated my own; whatever you shall be, ever shall you be mine; only do you make choice whether you will wish me to wish as well to love you, or whether I am to love you by compulsion. I would rather spread my sails and use propitious gales; since, though I should refuse, I shall still be forced to love.

Much and long time have I suffered; by your faults is my patience overcome. Depart from my wearied breast, disgraceful Love. In truth I have now liberated myself, and I have burst my chains; and I am ashamed to have borne what it shamed me not to endure. I have conquered; and Love subdued I have trodden under foot; late have the horns come upon my head. Have patience, and endure, this pain will one day avail thee; often has the bitter potion given refreshment to the sick.

And could I then endure, repulsed so oft from thy doors, to lay a free-born body upon the hard ground? And did I then, like a slave, keep watch before thy street door, for some stranger I know not whom, that you were holding in your embrace? And did I behold it, when the wearied paramour came out of your door, carrying off his jaded and exhausted sides? Still, this is more endurable than the fact that I was beheld by him; may that disgrace be the lot of my foes.

When have I not kept close fastened to your side as you walked, myself your keeper, myself your husband, myself your companion? And, celebrated by me forsooth, did you please the public: my passion was the cause of passion in many. Why mention the base perjuries of your perfidious tongue? and why the Gods forsworn for my destruction? Why the silent nods of young men at banquets, and words concealed in signs arranged beforehand? She was reported to me to be ill; headlong and distracted I ran; I arrived; and, to my rival she was not ill.

Bearing these things, and others on which I am silent, I have oft endured them; find another in my stead, who could put up with these things. Now my ship, crowned with the votive chaplet, listens in safety to the swelling waves of the ocean. Cease to lavish your blandishments and the words which once availed; I am not a fool, as once I was. Love on this side, Hatred on that, are struggling, and are dragging my tender heart in opposite directions; but Love, I think, still gets the better. I will hate, if I can; if not, reluctantly will I love; the bull loves not his yoke; still, that which he hates he bears.

I fly from treachery; your beauty, as I fly, brings me back; I abhor the failings of your morals; your person I love. Thus, I can neither live without you, nor yet with you; and I appear to be unacquainted with my own wishes. I wish that either you were less handsome, or less unprincipled. So beauteous a form does not suit morals so bad. Your actions excite hatred; your beauty demands love. Ah wretched me! she is more potent than her frailties.

O pardon me, by the common rites of our bed, by all the Gods who so often allow themselves to be deceived by you, and by your beauty, equal to a great Divinity with me, and by your eyes, which have captivated my own; whatever you shall be, ever shall you be mine; only do you make choice whether you will wish me to wish as well to love you, or whether I am to love you by compulsion. I would rather spread my sails and use propitious gales; since, though I should refuse, I shall still be forced to love.

Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. He enjoyed enormous popularity, but, in one of the mysteries of literary history, was sent by Augustus into exile in a remote province on the Black Sea, where he remained until his death. Ovid himself attributes his exile to carmen et error, “a poem and a mistake”, but his discretion in discussing the causes has resulted in much speculation among scholars.

The first major Roman poet to begin his career during the reign of Augustus, Ovid is today best known for the Metamorphoses, a 15-book continuous mythological narrative written in the meter of epic, and for works in elegiac couplets such as Ars Amatoria (“The Art of Love”) and Fasti. His poetry was much imitated during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and greatly influenced Western art and literature. The Metamorphoses remains one of the most important sources of classical mythology.